Associate Professor Nicola Parsons
Nicola Parsons is Associate Professor in Eighteenth-Century Literature at the University of Sydney. Her research expands the possibilities for studying the eighteenth-century novel by showing its productive relation with less canonical prose forms, such as the secret history, the periodical, and the miscellany. She is the author of Reading Gossip in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Palgrave, 2009), and editor of Reading Historical Fiction: The Revenant and Remembered Past, with Kate Mitchell (Palgrave, 2013), and Making Ideas Visible in the Eighteenth Century (Delaware UP, 2021) with Jennifer Milam. She serves on the editorial board of series with Cambridge University Press and Brill, and her work has been supported by major grants from the Australian Research Council (ARC) and fellowships in the UK and US. An award-winning teacher and HDR supervisor, Dr Parsons is passionate about building academic communities that are diverse and inclusive.
- eighteenth-century British literature and cultural history
- the history and theory of the novel
- histories of sexuality
- periodicals, especially The Athenian Mercury, Ladies Mercury, Tatler and Spectator
- literary history and historical fiction
Teaching
Some of the units I currently teach include:
- ENGL2654: Novel Worlds
- ENGL3623: The Eighteenth Century: Scandal and Sociability
- ENGL3715: Jane Austen, In and Out of History
- ENGL4121 | ENGL6110: The Secret History of the Novel
Supervisions
I welcome inquiries from students interested in British literature and culture of the long eighteenth century, novels and other forms of prose writing, periodicals, literary history and historical fiction.
PhD and MPhil Completions
Hamish Wood, "'Vertue and Decency': The Gendering of Character in Eighteenth-Century English Epistolary Fiction". PhD. 2023
Bonnie Ho, “The Animal Unbound: Liminal Bodies, Language and the Contemporary Southern Novel”. MPhil. 2021
Amelia Dale, "'Spots upon the soul': Reading Quixotic Impressions in Eighteenth-Century Quixotic Narratives". PhD. 2014
Katrina Clifford, "Sisterly Subjects: Brother-sister relationships in female-authored domestic novels, 1750-1820". PhD. 2014
Current PhD and MPhil Supervisions
Susannah Arthur, “‘To cultivate minds, improve their intellectuals, and season tender hearts’: Literary, ideological and pedagogical foundations of early modern women writers”. PhD.
Ziyang Zhang, "Archipelagic (Dis)union between Women and Nation: Female Character Types and Domestic Spatial Tropes in British and Irish Epistolary Novels of the 1770s and 1780s“.PhD.
Monica Jarman, "Universals and Particulars: Race in the Austenverse". PhD.
Danyan Xue, "Imagining China and the Making of English Modernity: Chinese Taste in English Literature from 1660 to 1750"
Christina King, "Finding Dorothea: The Hunt for Evidence of the Elusive Life and Contribution of Lady Dorothea Banks (1758-1828). PhD.
Current Projects
Consuming Character: Harris's List and Eighteenth-Century Print
Dr Parsons's current book project, undertaken in collaboration with Dr Amelia Dale (ANU), delves into a corpus of disreputable, marginalised, and pornographic eighteenth-century texts to argue for a reconceptualisation of literary character that centres upon consumption, repetition, and desire. The focus is Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies (1760–1794), a descriptive catalogue of women working London’s sex trade, and a cluster of similar texts that were read alongside it. Through these texts, a new history of character emerges, and with it a new understanding of the productive ground of literary character, and the intricate relations of sexuality and consumption that underpin eighteenth-century print. Consuming Character offers a new, character-centered way forward for debates concerning histories of the novel, the relations between literature and pornography, and of the literary as a category.
Forthcoming Publications
"Harris’s ListAmong the Collectors: Bibliophilia and Scopophilia" with Amelia Dale, in The Uses of Books in the Eighteenth Century, edited by Leah Orr and Nicholas Seager, Cambridge University Press. Forthcoming 2026.
- Editorial Advisory Board, "Global Historical Fictions", Brill (2023-present)
- Editorial Advisory Board, Elements in Eighteenth-Century Connections, Cambridge University Press (2019-present)
- International Advisor (Australia & New Zealand), The Scriblerian and Kit Kats
- Treasurer, Australian and New Zealand Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ANZSECS), (2014-2016)
- Australian and New Zealand Society for Eighteenth Century Studies (ANZSECS)
- American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS)
- Modern Language Association (MLA)
- Romantic Studies Association of Australasia (RSAA)
- British Assocation for Romantic Studies (BARS)
- SUPRA HDR Supervisor of the Year Award, 2023, 2024.
- Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Excellence in Teaching Award, 2022
- Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Excellence in Teaching Award (Design & Practice), 2010
Spain | (The University of Huelva) "“Women and the Early Novel in English: The European Context (1621-1699),” 2023-2026 A three-year grant led by Dr Sonia Villegas-Lopez funded by the Andalusian Research Agency. I am one of a team of international investigators that include researchers from Europe, the UK, USA, and Canada. |
| Project title | Research student |
|---|---|
| ‘To cultivate minds, improve their intellectuals, and season tender hearts’: Literary, ideological and pedagogical foundations of Early Modern women writers | Susannah ARTHUR |
| Finding Dorothea: the hunt for evidence of the elusive life and contribution of Lady Dorothea Banks 1758-1828 | Christina KING |
| Imagining China and the Making of English Modernity Chinese Taste in English Literature from 1660 to 1750 | Danyan XUE |
Selected publications
(University of Delaware Press, 2021)
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
Publications
Books
- Parsons, N. (2009). Reading Gossip in Early Eighteenth-Century England. United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan.
Edited Books
- Milam, J., Parsons, N. (2021). Making Ideas Visible in the Eighteenth Century. Newark: University of Delaware Press. [More Information]
- Mitchell, K., Parsons, N. (2013). Reading Historical Fiction: The Revenant and Remembered Past. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. [More Information]
Book Chapters
- Parsons, N. (2023). Anon, 'The German Atalantis' (1715) (forthcoming). In April London (Eds.), The Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel, 1660-1820. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
- Parsons, N. (2023). Anon, 'The Secret History of Arlus and Odolphus' (1710) (forthcoming). In April London (Eds.), The Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel, 1660-1820. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
- Parsons, N. (2023). Elizabeth Rowe, 'Letters Moral and Entertaining' (1729-32) (forthcoming). In April London (Eds.), The Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel, 1660-1820. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
Journals
- Dale, A., Parsons, N. (2024). "Tristram Shandy" at the Subterranean Orgy: Sterne in "The Ghost of Moll King" and "Harris's List". The Shandean: an annual volume devoted to Laurence Sterne, 34, 172-181. [More Information]
- Parsons, N. (2024). Backlash: Libel, Impeachment, and Populism in the Reign of Queen Anne by Rachel Carnell (review). Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 36(3), 492-494. [More Information]
- Parsons, N., Dale, A. (2023). Fictions of Character. Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 35(4), 497-502. [More Information]
Edited Journals
- Parsons, N., Milam, J. (2017). Ideas and Enlightenment in the Long Eighteenth Century: Selected Papers from the Fifteenth David Nichol Smith Seminar. Eighteenth-Century Life, 41(2).
- Parsons, N. (2001). Space. Antithesis, 12.
2024
- Dale, A., Parsons, N. (2024). "Tristram Shandy" at the Subterranean Orgy: Sterne in "The Ghost of Moll King" and "Harris's List". The Shandean: an annual volume devoted to Laurence Sterne, 34, 172-181. [More Information]
- Parsons, N. (2024). Backlash: Libel, Impeachment, and Populism in the Reign of Queen Anne by Rachel Carnell (review). Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 36(3), 492-494. [More Information]
2023
- Parsons, N. (2023). Anon, 'The German Atalantis' (1715) (forthcoming). In April London (Eds.), The Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel, 1660-1820. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
- Parsons, N. (2023). Anon, 'The Secret History of Arlus and Odolphus' (1710) (forthcoming). In April London (Eds.), The Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel, 1660-1820. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
- Parsons, N. (2023). Elizabeth Rowe, 'Letters Moral and Entertaining' (1729-32) (forthcoming). In April London (Eds.), The Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel, 1660-1820. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
2022
- Parsons, N., Dale, A. (2022). 'Harris's List' of Covent-Garden Ladies (1760-1794): New Copies and New Evidence Regarding its History. The Library: the transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 23(4), 458-488. [More Information]
- Dale, A., Parsons, N. (2022). Pornographic Celebrity and the Characters of Harris's List. The Eighteenth Century, 63(1-2), 41-62. [More Information]
2021
- Milam, J., Parsons, N. (2021). Introduction: The Potential Visibility of Ideas in Enlightenment Art and Aesthetics. In Jennifer Milam and Nicola Parsons (Eds.), Making Ideas Visible in the Eighteenth Century, (pp. 1-10). Newark: University of Delaware Press. [More Information]
- Milam, J., Parsons, N. (2021). Making Ideas Visible in the Eighteenth Century. Newark: University of Delaware Press. [More Information]
2018
- Parsons, N. (2018). "The ARMS of Friendship": John Dunton's Platonic Acquisitions. In Emrys D. Jones, Victoria Joule (Eds.), Intimacy and Celebrity in Eighteenth-Century Literary Culture: Public Interiors, (pp. 189-209). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. [More Information]
- Parsons, N. (2018). The Ladies Mercury. In Jennie Batchelor, Manushag N. Powell (Eds.), Women's Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1690-1820s The Long Eighteenth Century, (pp. 315-326). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. [More Information]
2017
- Milam, J., Parsons, N. (2017). Ideas and Enlightenment. Eighteenth-Century Life, 41(2), 3-8. [More Information]
- Parsons, N., Milam, J. (2017). Ideas and Enlightenment in the Long Eighteenth Century: Selected Papers from the Fifteenth David Nichol Smith Seminar. Eighteenth-Century Life, 41(2).
- Parsons, N. (2017). Secret History and the Periodical. In Rebecca Bullard, Rachel Carnell (Eds.), The Secret History in Literature, 1660 - 1820, (pp. 147-159). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [More Information]
2015
- Parsons, N. (2015). Early fiction. In Catherine Ingrassia (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Women's Writing in Britain, 1660-1789, (pp. 164-179). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [More Information]
2013
- Parsons, N. (2013). Reading and Remembering History in Daniel Defoe's 'A Journal of the Plague Year'. In Kate Mitchell, Nicola Parsons (Eds.), Reading Historical Fiction: The Revenant and Remembered Past, (pp. 119-135). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. [More Information]
- Mitchell, K., Parsons, N. (2013). Reading Historical Fiction: The Revenant and Remembered Past. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. [More Information]
- Mitchell, K., Parsons, N. (2013). Reading the Represented Past: History and Fiction from 1700 to the Present. In Kate Mitchell, Nicola Parsons (Eds.), Reading Historical Fiction: The Revenant and Remembered Past, (pp. 1-18). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. [More Information]
2010
- Parsons, N. (2010). Inscribing the Carte de Tendre: mapping epistolary intimacy in Queen Anne's court. In Salzman, Paul (Eds.), Expanding the Canon of Early Modern Womens Writing, (pp. 168-180). Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
2009
- Parsons, N. (2009). Reading Gossip in Early Eighteenth-Century England. United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan.
2004
- Parsons, N. (2004). Unlocking Court Culture: Delarivier Manley's New Atalantis. In Lisa O'Connell and Peter Cryle (Eds.), Libertine Enlightenment: Sex, Liberty and License in the Eighteenth-Century, (pp. 145-160). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
2001
- Parsons, N. (2001). Space. Antithesis, 12.
- Parsons, N. (2001). Theoretical Territories: An Orientation to Volume 12. Antithesis, 12, 8-10.
Selected Grants
2014
- Ideas and Enlightenment: The Long Eighteenth Century (David Nichol Smith Seminar XV), Sydney, NSW, 10-13 December, Milam J, Ledbury A, Parsons N, Ferng J, Ian Potter Foundation/Conference
2011
- Putting Periodisation to Use: Exploring the Limits of Early Modernity, Gagne J, Gal O, Gaukroger S, Griffiths H, Maddox A, McIlvenna U, Parsons N, Semler L, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences/FASS Collaborative Research Scheme
- Writing the World - Transnationalism in Literary Studies, Bandhauer A, Borghesi F, Christie W, Cowan R, Dixon R, Giles P, Karalis V, Kirkpatrick P, Lu Y, Minter P, Morgan P, Parsons N, Rooney B, Suter R, Walsh A, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences/FASS Collaborative Research Scheme
- Eliza Haywood & Daniel Defoe: Gender, Genre and Nation in the Eighteenth-Century Novel, Parsons N, Australian Research Council (ARC)/Discovery Projects (DP)